Field note · December 12, 2025
The category that eats the chart
5 values with 32.1% concentrated in one of them, and what that does to every chart downstream.
queue on support-tickets has 5 values, and one of them is 32.1% of the data.
technical— 1,282 rows, 32.1%billing— 960 rows, 24.0%account— 647 rows, 16.2%onboarding— 586 rows, 14.6%integrations— 525 rows, 13.1%
The top three take 72.2% between them. With only 5 values there is no tail to worry about, which makes this a genuinely easy column to chart.
select queue,
count(*) as rows,
round(100.0 * count(*) / sum(count(*)) over (), 1) as pct,
round(avg(first_response_min)::numeric, 2) as avg_first_response_min
from support_tickets
group by 1
order by rows desc;The second column is the one that matters. Share of rows tells you what is common; avg_first_response_min tells you whether the common thing is the important thing. They disagree more often than not, and a chart that shows only the first is answering the easier question.
Decide what happens to the tail before you plot it. "Other" as an explicit bucket is honest; twelve slivers is not, and neither is silently taking the top eight.